One of the major subtexts of Prayers for the Assassin is that in a war that will span generations, faith counts, and in contemporary Western society, the cultural elites consider faith largely irrelevant. Proof positive of this emerged at the presidential news conference yesterday, wherein the media poodles managed to simultaneously snap at the president’s ankles while preening for the cameras. Not an easy feat. In their desire to draw blood they nattered on about whether Iraq was in a state of civil war; they shouted civilian casualties and domestic surveillance, they yapped censure and timetables. In an act of Christian charity, W even tossed Helen Thomas a softened Milk Bone allowing her to use the phrase,

blood for oil.

As usual the president strolled off stage-right untouched. No one brought up the one question which might have struck deep at the underlying Bush Doctrine, ie, According to CNN, 278 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan as of March 22, 2006. Mr. President, how do you think those brave men and women would feel if they knew they had died to bring democracy to a country which considers it a capital offense for a Muslim to convert to Christianity? Would they feel their sacrifice was valid? Perhaps you could ask their love ones if the empty place at the kitchen table was worth it to enable Afghan President Karzai to preside over the execution of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan citizen whose conversion to Christianity from Islam is considered an act of apostacy.

No one at the press conference thought to ask the president about this. And whether we might be looking at a similar scenario if and when we bring democracy to Iraq. How to explain such a missed opportunity? The answer is obvious: the assembled media considered questions of religious freedom, of faith and convestion, irrelevant. I’m sure in the White House Press room such questions are irrelevant. They may not be irrelevant to the men and women who answered their nation’s call and put their lives in jeopardy. They are surely not irrelvant to Abdul Rahman, who has been offered numerous opportunities by the Afghan authorities to renounce his Christianity. Abdul Rahman refused. He refused when a few simple phrases would have released him from jail. Would have spared him from execution. He refused.

Worse Than Useless

The U.N. is worse than useless, it is downright dangerous to free democracies whose laws don't align with the "international rules" as asserted by the likes of UN Special Rapporteur Doudou Diéne. As an enthusiastic practitioner of free speech, I say Doodoo can go to hell and take the whole fucking U.N. with him.

Saturday, March 18th Jyllands-Posten broke the story about an attack by UN special rapporteur Doudou on Denmark. The report has yet to be released to the public in full, but it was leaked by the UN to press sources in Denmark. The reasons for this are obscure. This blog thinks it is because the Human Rights Committee has been dissolved. This means that the new Human Rights Council won’t be able to meet until sometime this summer. Therefore Mr. Diéne probably leaked the report to the press in Denmark to ensure that it could become part of the debate before it would be seen as old news.

Here are examples of UNlogic as practised by Diéne:

“Finally, the Danish government’s first reaction - rejecting to take an official position on the nature and publication of the cartoons while referring to Freedom of Speech as well as rejecting to meet with the ambassadors from the Moslem countries - is symptomatic not only for the political trivialisation of Islamophobia but also, due to its consequences, to the central role those politically responsible have for the national extent and the international consequences in the shape of demonstrations and expressions of Islamophobia.”

“Judicially, the Danish government ought therefore, especially considering its international obligations, to have, respecting Freedom of Speech, taken a position not only on the consequnces of the caricatures for its community of 200.000 Moslems but also for the protection of peace and order.”

“The author of this report can’t omit asking himself what the political and ideological national context the publication of the caricatures is a part of, and what the position of the Danish government is. This context is primarily colored by an agreement reached on December 8th, 2005 between the government and the Danish People’s Party, an extremist right-wing party, to tighten the conditions for achieving citizenship in a country whose immigration policies are considered among Europe’s most restrictive, a country where the Danish People’s Party has 13 percent of the votes and where a spokesman of the party, Søren Espersen, describes “Moslem immigration as a means to overrun Europe, the same as they’ve been doing the last 1.400 years.”

“At the end of this report, the author has especially been concerned with the development of the position of both the newspaper in question and the government. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper on Monday, January 30th submitted his “apology” not for the publication of the caricatures, which he still considered “sober”, but for having “offended” the Moslems [I wouldn't even have apologized for that!-Ed.]. But the publication that followed by several European newspapers, in spite of the strength of the feelings these cartoons have aroused in the Arab world, exceeds the legitimate defense of Freedom of Speech and seems to confirm Samuel Huntington’s thesis of a clash of civilisations.”

This idiot wouldn't know about freedom of speech if he fell over it. There is no way to "exceed the legitimate defense" of freedom of speech and certainly no such thing as a clash of civilizations unless one of them is already distinctly uncivilized, as are Islamofascists.

Here is Wafa Sultan's answer to that ridiculous excuse for a thought: “The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.”

“Finally the author of this report (sic) the violent reactions which followed the publication of said caricatures and especially the threats and the attacks on persons in no way related to the publication, made targets exclusively due to their nationality, also the the threaths against diplomatic representations are to be regretted.”

“Their uncompromising defense of a Freedom of Speech without limits or restrictions is not in accordance with the international rules which are based on a necessary balance between Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, especially to combat calls for racial and religious hatred, and which all the member countries of UN have decided are the basic rules for Human Rights. This attitude shows an alarming lack of sensitivity and understanding of the religious conviction and deep emotions of the groups of society in question. Thus the newspapers strengthen the connection between Islam and Terrorism which arose after September 11th and which is the most important reason for Islamophobia being on the rise in the world at large and in their own countries.”

I've already stated for the record what I think of the term "Islamophobia". No sane or honest person would ever buy into such a despicable concept when it is Islamic fascists who in fact practise and act on "infidelophobia" by murdering as many non-Muslims as possible.

The Hopeless United NationsBy Mogens Camre, Member of the European Parliament for the Danish People’s Party

Once upon a time, the world put its trust in the United Nations. It was were just people would meet and negotiate solutions to the world’s conflicts. Here the developed countries would jointly make decisions about combating war, ignorance and poverty. Here battles would be fought to spead Human Rights to people in undeveloped dictatorships.

As time went by, the UN became an enormous bureaucracy with an enormous amount of people, paid with enormous tax-free salaries, which with limited effects were using money which some - but far from all - member countries paid into the system.

During the Kofi Annan’s tenure as General Secretary, we have witnessed the genocides in the areas of the Great Lakes where the UN didn’t react as it ought to. After that followed the extensive corruption in connection with the Oil for Food programme in Iraq and today we are witnessing the lacking response to the murder of Christians in Sudan by terrorist Moslems.

The scandal of nepotism sorrounding the son of Kofi Annan strictly adheres to African and Islamic leaders’ tradition of primarily helping their own families.

The 56 Moslem members of the UN are busy making the UN their vehicle for Islamic conquest of the world. That is of course not the official explanation. It’s called the rights of minorities to special treatment and special rights in countries to which they have migrated or fled.

The UN is trying to force an interpretation of the Human Rights which will mean that national constitutions and cultures must be bent to favor the cultures of losers which through religious extremism, uncontrollable population growth and the poverty that goes with it, are on a rampage of conquest in the Western world.

We must be pressuredIt’s in that light we must view the judicially baseless attack by the UN Special Rapporteur, Senegalese Doudou Diéne.

It’s clear to anyone who has read the report that Diéne doesn’t know the meaning of Democracy and that what he wants is a dictatorship where religious guardians decide what the People are allowed to think and how they must live. The purpose of the attack is of course to pressure us and other Westerners to conform to Moslem standards. We must be pressured into silence and inaction so Islam can freely spread across the world and force unto others the culture which has made the Islamic countries the world’s poorest, most underdeveloped, most ignorant and the largest violators of Human Rights.

Islam is not only ancient religious perceptions of the the world and Men. Islam is a political ideology which claims sole power to rule the world and oppress and destroy other People. Forces within the UN are eager to help Islam do that, but their demands are served by Kofi Annan when he tells the world with a mild voice that we must show respect to superstition and not tell the truth. Even as he says that, Islamofascism is spreading across the world.

Islam, as described in the Koran, spites Human Rights and is a threat to development and progress. For that reason alone, it should be granted no place in the West. It’s time to tell that to the UN.

I disagree with that final point; it's well past time to expect the U.N. to listen to anything but its own echoes. The U.N. is worse than useless, it's dangerous. Its danger lies in its deeply-imbedded anti-western ethos and its use by tyrants as the means by which to propagate the tyranny of Islamofascism.

Abdul Rahman

NRO's Editors get it right in An Affront To Civilization, which title says it all about the conflict between Islamic fascism and freedom of expression, period:

If there is always a balancing act between accommodating the religious beliefs of a traditional society like Afghanistan and coaxing it toward reform, the Rahman case is not a close call — killing or jailing someone for his religious beliefs is always wrong, and is especially galling in a country so dependent on American military forces and aid.

People have been looking to President Bush for a firm statement in support of Rahman, but it is only Karzai who can and must save Rahman from the bloodthirsty Islamists.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Random Notes

Captain's Quarters on Palestinian chickens coming home to roost in Iraq:The Palestinians have been cursed with the worst leadership imaginable, but the fault is theirs. If they wonder why they are no longer welcome in Iraq, they should recall their enthusiasm for one of the twentieth century's more brutal tyrants and their assistance in keeping him in power. Their choices have led them once again to someone else's border, begging for relief, and their history will keep anyone with an ounce of sense from letting them inside.And predictably, the EU shows no sense whatsoever.

Again from Power Line, this time on "the work of zealots rather than scholars", based on "extraordinarily weak evidence." No surprise that the left is all afoam at the piehole about their latest propaganda heroes, who proffer a version of the left's "rape defense" on behalf of Islamic terror; in this case, if only America would stop its dalliances with the Zionists, the forces of hatred aligned against Israel wouldn't be so upset and universally genocidal. (Palestinians, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.N.)

Author Sebastian Junger reports from Afghanistan in the current Vanity Fair on the atrocities the Taliban are committing today. They include skinning a man alive and leaving him to die in the sun. Another man was forced to watch as his wife was gang-raped. Then his eyes were put out, so that the horrific crime would be the last image he would ever see. The relatives of U.S. soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan are likewise appalled. "It's not like the Taliban ever signed a peace treaty," Natalie Healy, the mother of a Navy SEAL killed by a Taliban rocket last year, told me. "They're still killing Americans."

Roger Simon notes:Fund raises the spectre of Paul de Man, the famous leader of deconstructionism, who rose to prominence on the Ivy League faculty while hiding his Nazi past. Ironically, the cultural relativisim behind that theory is the very idea that has so permeated [Yale] that all world views, including the Taliban's extremist Islam, are welcome. Also ironic is the fact that in terms of sheer numbers of adherents extremist Islam is far more successful today than Nazism ever was.

Everybody now has their own scenario for the war that should have been fought three years ago. The important revelations in "Cobra II," by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, about the underestimated reserve strength of the Fedayeen Saddam, give us an excellent picture of what the successor regime to the Baath Party was shaping up to be: an Islamized para-state militia ruling by means of vicious divide-and-rule as between the country's peoples. No responsible American government could possibly have allowed such a contingency to become more likely. We would then have had to intervene in a ruined rogue jihadist-hosting state that was already in a Beirut-like nightmare.

Absent federal democracy and power-sharing, there will not just be anarchy and fragmentation and thus a moral victory for jihadism, but opportunist interventions from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (That vortex, by the way, is what was waiting to engulf Iraq if the coalition had not intervened, and would have necessitated an intervention later but under even worse conditions.) There are signs that many Iraqi factions do appreciate the danger of this, even if some of them have come to the realization somewhat late. The willingness of the Kurdish leadership in particular, to sacrifice for a country that was gassing its people until quite recently, is beyond praise...

How can anyone, looking down the gun-barrel into the stone face of Zarqawi, say that fighting him is a "distraction" from fighting al Qaeda?

And here's Hitchens on what the world community should have said in the leadup to OIF. Coulda woulda shoulda, but why shouldn't Hitchens be able to play the same game the left plays? And he certainly speaks for me:

Well, if everyone else is allowed to rewind the tape and replay it, so can I. We could have been living in a different world, and so could the people of Iraq, and I shall go on keeping score about this until the last phony pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer.

The Foreign Military Studies Office web site has released more of the Iraq Papers and can use help translating from the Arabic into English. Any Arab-speaking individuals or groups interested in helping uncover the truth about Saddam?

SAVE THE TROOPS--SLAUGHTER IRAQISTerrorist-huggers answer the cattlecall:In Greece, activists pledged to "continue until we see the last general running for a helicopter on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad," through a statement in the Stop the War Alliance website.

Stop The War Alliance ignores the fate of the millions more who would be slaughtered, as followed the very moment in Vietnamese history that statement invokes. What does it take to reach these people?

Doddering fencepost Helen Thomas gave a speech today and a White House press conference broke out. Bush has to continue to counter the absurd lies spewed by the likes of Thomas. Aaahh, but you gotta love that old...coot.

Civil War/Not A Civil War:If the civil strife in post-liberation Iraq matched that of real civil war in Bosnia ten years ago, there would be 650,000 Iraqi fatalities per year – say 1800 dead Iraqis a day from “sectarian strife” to match the average death rate of Bosnia Herzegovina’s civil war.

The Man With No Name

In a vein similar to that of the previous post, Tom Maguire notes the disappearance of Patrick Fitzgerald's name from MSM stories not involving Scooter Libby. So pronounced is this effect that the LA Times even attempts to obfuscate Fitzgerald's role:

Anyone can make a mistake. In fact, they are so common that it hardly seems to be necessary to mention the person who makes one - that, at least, seems to be the principle guiding the MSM as they dance around (and with) a particular figure they know and fear.

Charges have been dropped against Northern Virginia businessman Frank L. Cowles Jr., who was arrested in November on allegations of conspiring to defraud a hedge fund out of $25 million.

A U.S. District Court judge in Chicago dropped criminal charges against Cowles on March 1 after the U.S. attorney's office there filed a motion to dismiss. Cases continue against two men who were charged with Cowles for allegedly defrauding a Chicago-based fund...."For someone who has been absolutely clean and honorable all my life, the charges came as quite a blow," Cowles, 76, said in a telephone interview.

"The only thing I've ever had on my record is three speeding tickets when I was 18," he said. "After a very, very exhaustive 3 1/2 -month investigation, they came up with the right conclusion."

Cowles's attorney, Robert D. Luskin of the law firm Patton Boggs in the District, said the complaint against Cowles was a mistake and that his client had been the victim of a scheme that cost him a great financial loss.

"This was a mistake," Luskin said. "The person that was thought to be the predator was actually the prey."

Plamaniacs recognize Robert Luskin's name - he is Karl Rove's attorney in what is inaptly called the Valerie Plame leak investigation ("Inapt" because the actual leak seems to have dropped off the prosecutor's radar).

But is there another name Plamaniacs might recognize in this story? There would be, if the WaPo would print it; golly, they weren't this coy when the case was filed last November:

U.S. Arrests Three In Hedge Fund Case

Frank L. Cowles Jr. is known in the Northern Virginia business community as the owner of car dealerships and a founding director of Virginia Commerce Bank in Arlington. Now, at age 76, he is facing allegations of a criminal conspiracy to defraud an Illinois hedge fund out of $25 million.

Cowles was arrested at his Scottsville horse farm last week and released on $1 million bail, said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Cowles made his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Chicago on Thursday.

In a criminal complaint filed by Fitzgerald on Tuesday, Cowles was accused of lying to a hedge fund manager, who was not identified, about the nature of a $25 million investment. According to the complaint, Cowles and two associates induced the hedge fund manager to make the investment, promising 10 percent profit per week in a deal that they claimed was being overseen by a Federal Reserve administrator.

Well hello, St. Patrick! And Cowles was accused of lying! And Luskin got him off! You can't make this stuff up. Well, eventually I will see if I can find some court documents, but this is pretty funny, and has to affect the odds of Fitzgerald seeking a rematch with Luskin over Rove.

But let's not single out the WaPo for unusual discretion - the LA Times seems to have developed a preference for job titles over names as well, although this is from last month:

Federal officials in Dallas mistakenly disclosed classified counter-terrorism information in a breach of national security that could also threaten one of the country's biggest terrorism prosecution cases, newly unsealed court records show.The blunder exposed secret wiretap requests that commonly include classified information from U.S. agencies, foreign intelligence reports and confidential sources.

The criminal case involves officials of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a now-defunct Islamic charity with alleged ties to terrorists. Its assets were frozen by the Treasury Department three months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What? That sounds like a real breach of national security - who was in charge of that investigation, anyway? The LA Times won't say, but Josh Marshall knows.

Look, I understand why the media want to stay on his good side, but c'mon - report the news.

Changing Times

NRO's Media Blog is always helpful in deconstructing the idiocy that passes for news, especially the partisan swill oozing out of the old legacy media. Nathan Goulding on how the Times, they are a' changin':

From the NYT archives:

By my estimate, Iraq's election day is the fifth time that American troops have been almost on their way home from an about-to-be pacified Iraq. The four other incipient V-I days were the liberation of Baghdad (April 9, 2003), President Bush's declaration that ''major combat operations have ended'' (May 1, 2003), the arrest of Saddam Hussein (Dec. 14, 2003) and the handover of sovereignty to our puppet of choice, Ayad Allawi (June 28, 2004).

But when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents — a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet — American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now looks like a puppet.

For so long, Mr. Bush has put up with caricatures of a wee W. sitting in the vice president's lap, Charlie McCarthy style, as big Dick Cheney calls the shots. But now the president has his own puppet to play with.

All last week in New York and Washington, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq parroted Mr. Bush's absurd claims that the fighting in Iraq was an essential part of the U.S. battle against terrorists that started on 9/11, that the neocons' utopian dream of turning Iraq into a modern democracy was going swimmingly, and that the worse things got over there, the better they really were.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday signed into law broad martial powers that allow him to impose curfews anywhere in the country, ban groups he considers seditious and order the detentions of people suspected of being security risks.[…]Postings appeared on Islamist Web sites on Tuesday denouncing Dr. Allawi as a puppet of the occupation forces.

The picture painted by the administration clashed with that of the former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, once hailed by Mr. Bush as the kind of fair-minded leader Iraq needed. He declared in an interview with the BBC that the country was nearing a ''point of no return.''

''It is unfortunate that we are in civil war,'' said Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister after the American invasion and now leads a 25-seat secular alliance of representatives in Iraq's 275-seat National Assembly. ''We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more.''

''If this is not civil war,'' he said, ''then God knows what civil war is.''

Funny, now there’s no mention of accusations calling Allawi a “puppet.” It will be noteworthy to see if the NYT and its columnists react toward Allawi the same way they did toward Michael Brown — a target of scorn until his anti-Bush statements became helpful.Pay to read Krugman and the Dowdian One? Now that's idiotic, especially when you can read NRO's Media Blog every day for free.

Rumsfeld On Iraq

Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.

One of the most important developments over the past year has been the increasing participation of Iraq's Sunni community in the political process. In the volatile Anbar province, where Sunnis are an overwhelming majority, voter turnout grew from 2 percent in January to 86 percent in December. Sunni sheiks and religious leaders who previously had been sympathetic to the insurgency are today meeting with coalition representatives, encouraging Iraqis to join the security forces and waging what violent extremists such as Abu al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda followers recognize as a "large-scale war" against them.What We've Gained In 3 Years in Iraq

Call The Waaaambulance

Ace Of Spades HQ on The Wired Prisoner Of The New York Times, in which the Old Grey Mare blames PBS, Vanity Fair and the U.S. military for its sloppy reporting. The punchline: the military had already identified the correct detainee, as reported in the Times in 2004.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Dam Has Broken

Stephen Hayes' pursuit of the Iraq Papers is fascinating and of historical import, but the cream is in the revelations, as only Hayes delivers:

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The final paragraph of the story is the most chilling:

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.Think about that last sentence.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Operation Swarmer: The Truth

More and more it seems I'm going to have to rethink my position on the war in Iraq. There's just too much of this sort of failure happening now:Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of a scene of carnage. Iraqi soldiers draped across blazing humvees, their hopeful green and red Iraqi flags riddled by bullets, had just been ambushed from a farm now littered by a half-dozen dead cows and a sobbing woman huddled by the remains of a mud oven.

The press, flown in from Baghdad to witness what the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders explained was the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground, saw instead a demonstration of the inability to come to grips with an elusive and deadly enemy. In exchange for heavy losses the Coalition Forces netted only 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra. It apparently remained a defiant symbol of the Resistance.

But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation instead of employing "Air Assault" (a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area), turned instead to become the greatest carpet bombing campaign of the war. White Phosphorus, napalm and high explosive was used time and again in response to frantic calls from panicked American commanders in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a demonstration of impotent fury. The U.S. and Iraqi commanders said that they had met "heavy resistance". They had met more than that.

Our source in Afghanistan No 11002 (for information about him see attachment 1) provided us with information that that Afghani Consul Ahmad Dahestani (for information about him see attachment 2) told him the following:

1. That Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and it that previously a group from Taliban and Osama Bin Laden group visited Iraq.

2. That America has proof that the government of Iraq and Osama Bin Laden group have shown cooperation to hit target within America.

3. That in case it is proven the involvement of Osama Bin Laden group and the Taliban in these destructive operations it is possible that American will conduct strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. That the Afghani Consul heard about the subject of Iraq relation with Osama Bin Laden group during his stay in Iran.

5. In light of this we suggest to write to the Commission of the above information.

Please view… Yours… With regards

Signature:……, Initials : A.M.M, 15/9/2001

Foot note: Immediately send to the Chairman of Commission

The document, dated four days after 9/11 and five days before the U.S. government made explicit to the Taliban its belief that bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the attack, describes a conversation between an Iraqi intelligence source and the Taliban Afghani Consul. The subject: how the U.S. would retaliate against Iraq, since America has proof that the government of Iraq and Osama Bin Laden group have shown cooperation to hit target(sic) within America.

Captain's Quarters adds:The Taliban went out of its way to warn Saddam that the US would retaliate against Iraq when we got the proof together. That explicitly shows cooperation between the two governments. Moreover, the same people who sheltered and sponsored Osama bin Laden turned immediately to Saddam after the attacks for coordination on their response. They would have had no reason to do so -- except knowing that Osama and Saddam had a working relationship in fostering terrorist attacks against America. MOREPower LineMichelle MalkinForeign Military Studies Office (FMSO)

Speaking of the Taliban, Dr. Rusty Shackleford has a video and photo essay on the activities of a certain Yale student's colleagues in Waziristan. Perhaps Yale's admissions board would like to scan the information and see if they can find more recruits of the same calibre as Taliban Man. Warning: contains Taliban Lifestyle™ cultural content.

Arianna Finds Her Niche

Can't get a handle on what Arianna Huffington is "about"? She appears to be some species of vampire; recall the strange behaviour she exhibited in hovering on the fringe of Arnold Schwarzenegger's swearing-in: was she there to congratulate him? To report on the event? Serve coffee and rolls? Actually, none of the above. All she really wanted was to appear in the footage, basking in Ahnold's glow. How creepy is that? Or there's the time she appeared on O'Rielly to excoriate the Bush administration for all the problems she perceived in Iraq. When Bill invited her to describe her solutions, the Huffingtonian one cringingly answered, "It's not my job to offer solutions." You could see it on Bill's face, although he had the grace not to put it quite this way, "Then what the fuck are you doing here?"

Operation Swarmer

Bill Roggio has an Update On Operation Swarmer that fleshes out the details, with help from Bloomberg. The nature of this assault so far has precluded the use of air strikes as I had erroneously expected:As day two of Operation Swarmer nears completion, further details about the raid are unearthed. Bloomberg provides an excellent summary of the scope and progression of the operation. The area of operations is a 100 square mile region northeast of Samarra, which is concentrating on the towns of Jillam, Mamlaha, Banat Hassan and Bukaddou. Some have incorrectly reported the assault was directly on Samarra proper and included intense air-to-ground fire. The fact is Swarmer is directed at the outlying areas of Samarra and no airstrikes were conducts (sic). An Air Assault is the insertion of troops via air, and may or may not involve air strikes. And in answer to the London Times, the BBC and other bingo callers experiencing difficulty placing Swarmer in its proper context, Roggio explains that this is "not a wag the dog moment":

As soon as Operation Swarmer kicked off, the pundits rushed to assign political motivations to the operation. One author of this school of analysis is Richard Beeston, the Diplomatic Editor of the London Times, who claims the air assault is "politically opportune for both the Bush Administration and the fledgling Iraqi government in Baghdad," "a show of US strength" and a "demonstrate that that they [American and Iraqi commanders], in fact, are in charge."

Rubbish.

Such analysis highlights the shortcomings of the media in covering war, particularly the inability to track combat operations and provide meaningful analysis. Instead of looking at the big picture, a single combat operation is viewed as an isolated incident, and there is little attempt to provide the context for an operation. The perfect example of this was the media reporting on the operations in western Anbar province during the spring and summer of 2005. Instead of viewing the operations as part of an overall campaign to subdue the insurgency and establish a permanent presence in the region, the operations were viewed individually, and judged as failures based on some undefined set of metrics.

But by the time the December 15th election was conducted, every major city and town on the Euphrates, from Ramadi to Husaybah right on the Syrian border, had a presence of U.S. Marines and troops, and the Iraqi Army. Not once did the media ask how they misunderstood what happened in Anbar, and to this day still refer to the Qaim and Triad regions of Anbar as the most dangerous regions in Iraq. That just is not so.

The fact is Operation Swarmer is the latest in a series of air assault operations conducted by U.S. and Iraqi troops over the past few months. On November 21, a small Iraqi and U.S. force of about 100 men conducted an air assault, code name Operation Old Baldy, on a “terrorist hideout” on Bayji Island, on the Tigris River. On February 13th, the Iraqi Army, with a force of about 100 men, conducted its first nighttime air assault against a suspected terrorist training camp in the village of Bit Shaitin, near Salman Pak. On March 2, Coalition and Iraqi forces conducted a multi-battalion air assault on the town of Sadr-Yusufiyah during Operation Morning Glory. Two full battalions of U.S. and Iraqi troops conducted this assault, along with a full brigade of Iraqi troops on the ground. The 101st Airborne division is trained for air mobile / air assault missions, and they are training their Iraqi counterparts in this mode of operations as well (that the Iraqis do not have an air mobile unit, or organic equipment, yet are being trained to conduct air mobile operations is another interesting topic of discussion) (Centcom reports that the Iraqi Air Force is in rebuilding phase).

The planning, equipment, and training required to conduct an air assault is more sophisticated than conventional methods of assault. If the Iraqi Army and Coalition wished to conduct a show of strength, there are easier, safer and cheaper ways to do so. An armored assault immediately comes to mind, and the Iraqi Army possesses their own armored units, which would be an impressive and accurate show of the Iraqi flag as opposed to riding shotgun on U.S. Blackhawks. But claims the dog was wagged makes for far more entertaining reporting, and far shallower reporting, too.I still want to know what those four AC-130 badboys are up to.

With Friends Like These...

MAR. 16, 2006: PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS LOVE CANADAIt's wonderful news that Canadian aidworker Mark Budzanowski has been set free by the Palestinian gunmen who kidnapped him. But somehow it does not cause my Canadian-born heart to swell with pride to hear terrorists and murderers declare, "We love Canada."

Then there's this detail:

"At first, the men in the masks didn't believe their eyes, and questioned the 57-year-old aid worker about Canada and about specific shops near Mr. Budzanowski's residence on Carlton Street in Toronto."

Suggests that the standards for tourist visas for Palestinian gunmen may need to be tightened a bit.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Iraq Papers: Bad News For Idiots

As soon as US Intelligence Chief John Negroponte let loose the Iraq Papers, the news got bad for the anti-war idiots, as Captain Ed points out:John Negroponte has finally begun releasing the captured Iraqi Intelligence Service papers that the US has held since Baghdad fell almost three years ago, after pressure from the White House and Congress. In one of the first releases by the intelligence chief, the papers reveal that not only did al-Qaeda exist in Iraq before the invasion but that they had an active and successful recruitment program to bring new Iraqi fighters to Afghanistan...

So we have established, at a minimum, that AQ had established itself in Iraq long before our March 2003 invasion. Moreoever, we have established that they had actively recruited fighters to attack Americans in Afghanistan. Both of those conditions would have warranted our invasion of Iraq as a continuance of the war on terror. After all, we had pledged to go after AQ wherever they had established themselves, and equally as important, we would have to cut off the flow of new fighters into the Afghanistan theater. As AJ Strata notes, with AQ active in his country and the US driving the UN Security Council towards actually enforcing its own resolutions in a massive use of force in the winter of 2002, Saddam would have been looking for means of transferring his WMD stock out of his hands and also arranging for the guerilla warfare he adopted after April 2003.

But the revelation also raises the sad truth that Saddam could have found favor with the UNSC had he turned AQ-in-Iraq over to a third party rather than using them as a proxy against the US.

Roggio With Reality

I wondered what was in the cards after reading this AP story a couple of weeks ago--I still have the note I made to myself that Centcom had decided to give the phrase "level the playing field" a whole new meaning to the Iraqi "insurgency". Now Bill Roggio, who is back at The Fourth Rail, has news and background for Operation Swarmer Near Samarra, the "largest air assault operation since Operation Iraqi Freedom I." Centcom's press release on the operation is here.

In Swearing In Parliament and Mini-Tet Foiled, Roggio also has analysis about the swearing-in of a new Iraqi parliament that will form the next government, the illusions and realities of "sectarian violence" and the Tet-like al-Qaeda plot against the IZ. Apparently the figure of over 400 al-Qaeda was not a typo or the product of someone's imagination, a fact that, while alarming on its face, given the outcome actually bodes quite well for Iraq and its new Security Forces.

Roggio also has the background and facts on the real civil war in Iraq in Civil War & Where's Zarqawi?. With few exceptions, you won't read or hear much about this elsewhere.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Right And Wrong

The pending release of the Iraq Files by American intelligence is going to be an historical event in almost every way imaginable. Not only is a large part of a monstrous tyrant's captured government records in possession of a conquering democracy's intel community; it will be distributed to the entire world for study. We will all be witness to the unfolding tale of Saddam's dealings with all manner of dark forces, including Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and France. Andrew C. McCarthy reminds us of the main reason America invaded Iraq, and what the Iraq Files will tell us in relation to that overriding imperative:

The WSJ editorial page extends well deserved kudos this morning to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) and Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) for their vital effort in pushing the intelligence community, finally, to agree to a rapid release of the trove of documents seized from the Saddam Hussein regime.

The administration’s flat-footedness on this has never been fathomable. The reason that has always made the most sense for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam was that he was an assiduous, historic facilitator of Islamist terrorism – harboring terrorists, financing them, and providing training, safe-passage and, perhaps, even operational support.

Thanks to tireless work by folks like Steve Hayes (at the Weekly Standard) and Tom Joscelyn (at both the standard and at Tom’s website, here, which is a must-read for those who follow national security issues), we already know that the relative smidgeon of the Iraq files that has eeked out so far underscores Saddam’s dalliances with bin Laden and his affiliates. But there’s tons more information to wade through, and now it looks like we’ll be able to do that.

This war was about national security, and the imperative of eradicating the Islamist terror network and states that promote it. It was not about democracy-building. The legacy of the Iraq war critically depends not on what kind of government Iraq ends up having, but on making the public case that Saddam was a terror-monger – that he was the leading paragon of regime-type President Bush rightly said had to change or be ousted right after 9/11.

For too long, people in the intelligence community (who were vested in the delusion that secular Saddam would never make common cause with Islamo-fascists), and people in the media and on the Left (who revile the administration) have been in no great hurry to see come to light evidence that would support the Iraq initiative. (For example, with all the news we read about intelligence failure in Iraq, how often have you seen reported in the mainstream press what Steve reported a few months ago in the Standard: to wit, that we are holding in Gitmo an Iraqi who is charged with having gone to Pakistan with Iraqi intelligence to explore blowing up the U.S. embassy there in August 1998 … the very same month al Qaeda blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania) (Emphasis mine)

KFC, Hillary! Style

Trouble In Paradise

From Wizbang:The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came to power by appealing to the poorest Iranians with a class warfare message [like Canada's NDP-Ed.]. Since he has become president, however, Ahamadinejad has done an effective job of destroying the Iranian economy, and the elite in Tehran are not pleased:

TEHRAN -- Iran's clerical and business establishments, deeply concerned by what they see as reckless spending and needlessly aggressive foreign policies, are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Within this context, many see the president's long-running confrontation with the United States and Europe over Tehran's nuclear program as an attempt to demonize the West and distract the Iranian public from pressing domestic problems.

A relatively small group of extremists "at the top of the government around the president" are seeking to benefit from a crisis with the West, because "that way they will be able once again to blame the West for all of their problems," said Mousa Ghaninejad, the editor of Iran's best-selling economics daily newspaper, Dunya Al-Eqtisad.

Millions of low-income Iranians voted for the new president last year, motivated by his firm stand against corruption and pledges to give financial priority to their needs.

"His appeal was to those for whom class discrimination is important, and his simple lifestyle gave an air of credibility to his claims," said Nasser Hadian, a political analyst at Tehran University who attended high school with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Hadian predicted that senior Iranian clerics would continue to support Mr. Ahmadinejad -- or at least not move against him -- for about a year because of that popular support. But privately, he said, they feel he is isolating Iran internationally and putting its economy at risk...

...The value of Tehran's stock market had fallen by $10 billion under Mr. Ahmadinejad as of February, the Los Angeles Times reported. Other recent Western news reports say that the nation's vibrant real-estate market has withered and that capital outflows are increasing.Mr. Ahmadinejad's spending has pushed the inflation rate to an estimated 13.5 percent, and several estimates say it could go as high as 30 percent this year.

Economic analysts note that inflation will be felt most acutely by the poor, undermining the president's support among his most important constituency.

Whether or not a whacko like ActMadInJihad is in charge, there is no room in the world for a nuked-up Iran, period. Let's hope the Iranians bring their little Hitler to heel before the Israeli and US Air Forces do.

Random Notes

FinallyStephen Hayes reports in the Weekly Standard:The Bush administration has decided to release most of the documents captured in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq. The details of the document release are still being worked out, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Those details are critical. At issue are things like the timeframe for releasing the documents, the mechanism for scrubbing documents for sensitive information, and most important, the criteria for withholding documents from the public. But some of the captured files should be available to the public and journalists within weeks if not days.

President George W. Bush has made clear in recent weeks his displeasure with the delays in getting the information out to the American public. On February 16, one day after ABC News broadcast excerpts of recordings featuring Saddam Hussein and his war cabinet, Bush met with congressional Republicans and several senior national security officials and said three times that the documents should be released. "This stuff ought to be out," he told National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. "Put this stuff out." It seems Bush will soon get his wish.I wonder what the terrorist Hitler McBushychimp's trying to hide now.

Iraq Al Qaeda Plot FoiledThe AP reports (via Yahoo):The Iraqi interior minister said Tuesday that authorities had foiled an al-Qaida plot that would have put hundreds of its men at critical guard posts around Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government.

A senior Defense Ministry official said the 421 al-Qaida fighters were actually recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.Four hundred and twenty-one al-Qaeda? That's a whole lotta skinnies for one operation in a "mostly domestic insurgency", isn't it? Think I'll wait for the official numbers.

NRO's Phi Beta Cons:What Do We “Elite” Yalies Think about Our Taliban Schoolmate?The predominant mood is confusion. The intelligentsia haven’t told Yalies what to think yet because even they haven’t made up their minds. Students aren’t sure how far their liberal open-mindedness is supposed to go.

Hashemi was a member of an evil and macabre terrorist group. Worse yet, he became their official spokesman and apologist to the world for their crimes — the Afghani Goebbels. The Taliban were not, as some suggest, a group of benevolent Afghani governors, but a gang of terrorists. Here’s the first of a series of Taliban-committed outrages listed in a Human Rights Watch report on the group:

Yakaolang and Bamiyan districts, June 2001: After retaking central Yakaolang, Taliban forces under the command of Mullah Dadaullah burned about 4,500 houses, 500 shops, and public buildings. As they retreated east, they continued to burn villages and to detain and kill Shi'a Hazara civilians in villages and side valleys in eastern Yakaolang and the western part of Bamiyan district.”The fact that Hashemi didn’t do the actual killing does not absolve him; Geobbels didn’t shoot anyone either. Equally, the fact that he is now retired means nothing — he isn’t “redeemed” by his retirement any more than a mafia gangster would be. I do not care to have this fellow in my dining hall, my college, or my country. Also at PBCSenator Cornyn writes to Secretary Chertoff about Yale's Taliban Man:

Dear Secretary Chertoff:

I write to you regarding Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban spokesman currently attending Yale University on a student visa.

In 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act and expanded the terror-related grounds of inadmissibility. Under current law, an alien is inadmissible or removable on terror-related grounds if he is a representative of any designated or nondesignated terrorist organization. Further, an alien is inadmissible or removable if the alien endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization. The REAL ID is clear that the grounds of inadmissibility and removal apply regardless of when the conduct in question occurred.

Mr. Hashemi was an official spokesman for the Taliban, which gave safe haven and other material support to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and continued to do so even after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted him into the United States on an F-1 student visa. I would like to know what steps the Department of Homeland Security is taking to determine whether Mr. Hashemi was properly admitted and whether the Department of Homeland Security will seek to deport Mr. Hashemi under one of the terror-related grounds of removal.

I am also concerned about the Department of Homeland Security’s role in reviewing Mr. Hashemi’s student visa application prior to its issuance. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States concluded that the key officials responsible for determining alien admissions (consular officers abroad and immigration inspectors in the United States) were not considered full partners in counterterrorism efforts prior to September 11, 2001, and as a result, opportunities to intercept the September 11 terrorists were missed.

Congress subsequently passed the Homeland Security Act, and section 428 allows DHS to assign staff to consular posts abroad to advise consular officers, review visa applications, and conduct investigations. Yet it is not clear that DHS officials were afforded an opportunity to review Mr. Hashemi’s visa application prior to its issuance. Please provide an update on the progress DHS is making in assigning officers to the consulate in Islamabad and whether those officers are fully integrated into the visa screening process.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,JOHN CORNYNUnited States Senator

Russ Feingold has telegraphed the Democrats' post-'06 plan to pander to the idiots by attempting to impeach Bush. The Wall Street Journal has a word describing both Feingold's censure proposal and Dems' impeachment plans: preposterous. But the Journal acknowledges the silver lining to this story:

[Feingold's] doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.

Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies. And they want to do so not because there is a smidgen of evidence that he's abused his office or lied under oath, but because they think he's been too energetic in using his powers to defend America. By all means, let's have this impeachment debate before the election, so voters can know what's really at stake.

NRO's Jim Geraghty discusses how tipping point politics could help rescue the world from Islamofascism by shifting the danger from its critics to the fascists themselves.

I think I'm still optimistic and hopeful; as I wrote, "Thankfully, many would say that bin Laden never spoke for them, and they're ready and eager to do whatever it takes to eradicate Islamist terror cells," and "that some Muslims, after years of seeing a faltering, doubtful, self-hating and equivocal West taking on the relentless faith of Islamist fanatics, would come off the fence."

But here's a point that I should have added: Right now, if you're a Muslim, and you denounce Islamism, there is a severe price to be paid - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, etc. Often you have to live in hiding and dodge death threats.

If you embrace and/or endorse Islamism, there is little price to be paid. The West won't attack you for what you say. You don't have to worry about some crazy Westerner suddenly pulling a Pym Fortyn or a Van Gogh on you. Heck, in London, you can preach jihad for years before the authorities even think about deporting you.

Thus, our message gets stifled; their message gets amplified.

But what if we changed that equation? What if the bad guys had to live in fear? What if they had to be careful about who they told, who was in the crowd they addressed, who was listening? I bet it would go a long way to slow down their efforts.

This same strategy is bearing fruit against the idiot-left in the blogosphere.

UNC Terrorist Asshole: It's In The Koran."My attack on Americans at UNC-CH on March 3rd was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah..."

And so yet another military secret gets leaked to the enemy: US Marines in Iraq are killing indiscriminately with fully-loaded Jeep Cherokees.

"Operation Bringing Home the Goods" has done just that, capturing six Palestinian terrorists including the animal responsible for planning the murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. Abbas is livid, the EU is whining, and the world is marvelling at the new Palestinian Terrorist-Chic.

EU talking pinheads characterized the operation as "useless and unfair", "fatal" to Israel’s domestic political goals, "deliberately humiliating", and a “torpedo on peace”.

No word what any of them thought of Rehavam's murder.

Roger Simons offers his take:Not missing a beat to curry favor with his constituents, desperate politician Mahmoud Abbas has called the Israeli raid on the Jericho prison an "unforgivable crime." Hyperventilating a bit there, are we, Mahmoud? Now let's see... Hamas says they are about to free a group of terrorists from that prison, including Ahmed Saadat (secretary general of the notorious PFLP), then the British and American monitors leave the premises, fearing for their own safety, and the Israelis are supposed to do what? Sit on their rear ends? Negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas - a lame duck who was never more than a figurehead in the first place and is now a joke? Talk to Hamas who doesn't even recognize their existence and are terrorists themselves? Let's get serious. Even if this weren't in the midst of an Israeli electoral campaign, the result would be obvious. The people who should really be playing close attention to this are the Iranians - and I would imagine they are. Because it is an example of how the Israelis take action when their interests are threatened. They'll do it again.

Chief Justice John Roberts and his associates (excluding Alito, who did not rule) unanimously swatted ideology aside to make way for the Constitution:Nothing about recruiting suggests that law schools agree with any speech by recruiters, and nothing in the Solomon Amendment restricts what the law schools may say about the military's policies. We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy. . . . Surely students have not lost that ability by the time they get to law school.The ruling is a significant rebuke to academy's so-called legal progressives, whose judgement and scholarship have been evaluated, by a Supreme Court now operating in the Real World, and have been found badly wanting.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Insurgent Split Into Gang Warfare In Anbar

I hear all the bad news about Iraq, most of which is either misinformed, spun or just made up.

Here is some real news:Native insurgents and Iraqi civilians have apparently declared war on the al-Qaeda insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They have achieved significant victories against the foreigners, driving them out of Anbar and forcing them back to the border ... the Iranian border.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Life Is Beautiful

Life is Beautifulby Mary Katharine HamMarch 11, 2006 01:48 PM PSTA story from Puerto Rico:While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: "Down with Fidel," sparking an international incident that escalated Friday with the velocity of a major league fastball. The image of the man holding the sign behind home plate was beamed live Thursday night to millions of TV viewers _ including those in Cuba. The top Cuban official at the game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan rushed to confront the man.

Puerto Rican police quickly intervened and took the Cuban official _ Angel Iglesias, vice president of Cuba's National Institute of Sports _ to a nearby police station where they lectured him about free speech.

"We explained to him that here the constitutional right to free expression exists and that it is not a crime," police Col. Adalberto Mercado was quoted as saying in El Nuevo Dia, a San Juan daily.

Free Speech 101 with the Puerto Rican police. The Cuban official must have loved that. I love it that he was subjected to a lecture on it.

Christopher Hitchens shares his own take on what to do about Iran as a nation worth saving from its present leadership (never mind the problem of the number one terror-sponsoring state on the planet soon having nukes). He makes the leap of imagination from a local mullah being denied a piece of the former American Embassy grounds to Air Force One's glorious landing on the tarmac in Tehran after some undefined diplomatic triumph, so I'm not wholly sold, but it's worth a read. My problem with Hitchens' concept: no daisycutters.

U of Sophistication

Recently departed editor-in-chief Will Robbins, who resigned from the paper on Sunday, further insulted the community's intelligence by calling the publication of the cartoon an "accidental foul-up". In other words, he doesn't want to take responsibility for his decisions. That won't look good on his resumé.

This incident perfectly illustrates the beauty of unfettered freedom of speech. It allows people to express themselves and go on the record for all to bear witness. I celebrate the rights of the good folks at the Sheath and disagree with those who would have censored the cartoon or want those responsible for its publication charged with hate crimes. That would just be stupid and unproductive, as it could have the effect of stifling expression, which could in turn prevent me from knowing what the idiots are thinking. That would be the real crime.

FYI: Here is the Sheaf's editorial policy from their web site:The Managing Editor(s) have the right to veto any submission they deem unfit for the Society newspaper. In determining this they will decide if the article or artwork would be of interest to a significant portion of the society and benefit the welfare of the readers. The Sheaf will not publish any racist, sexist, homophobic, or libelous material.It may, however, occasionally publish tard-rendered anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-capitalist, idiot-left tripe. And in this case as in so many others, there is indeed homophobia at work here: no-one uses homosexual motifs to attack others as does the left. And it shouldn't be hard to spot the ever-present anti-Semitism.

Further thoughts from Kate at SDA:Now, time to take this issue down another tangent - so far the controversy has been limited to the offense given to Christians. That raises an interesting, and as yet, unasked question - When are the cartoonists going to be called on the carpet to explain the hatred directed at so-called "capitalists"? The premise that "capitalism=bad" and that any group, any individual, any religion should have to disassociate themselves from business to attain moral purity is an intellectual embarrassment to begin with. But the cartoon goes one step further - in choosing a pig to represent the businessman, they have chosen the time honored progaganda tool of dehumanization.That these small-minded refugees of Marxism are receiving a heavily subsidized education at an institution funded by tax revenues generated in large part by the very "capitalists" they would portray as pigs, just adds injury to insult.Instead of hauling them before the Human Rights Commission, or calling for a wholesale purge at the Sheaf, I'd suggest a not-so-gentle push towards a little moral purity of their own - by removing the stench of "capitalism/consumerism" from their university education. Allow the enlightened to demonstrate the courage of their left-wing convictions. Present them with an invoice for the total cost of their education to date, adjust tuition to cover 100% of the costs, and cut off of any tax-funded student loans.Something tells me the artist Y!th and his defenders at the U of S would find that a little too hard to 'swallow'.

The Public is invited to a memorial pancake breakfast at Denny's Restaurant on Douglas Street near Finlayson, 10 am, Sunday March 12, 2006 to celebrate the life and untimely death of Rachel Corrie, Peace Activist with the International Solidarity Movement.

You’re Not Reading About Iraq

While the MSM and the cut-and-runners pine for a civil war that, in their fantasies, would result in the withdrawal of US troops, there are abundant ongoing operations to rebuild Iraq and return full control to its citizens.

"In early February, a National Guard unit from Illinois discovered eleven weapons caches in less than two weeks, including one very significant cache:

And most such operations are now co-operative missions combining US and Iraq forces, both in combat and in community rebuilding projects. But there is much more to the picture in Crawford's link-rich article, every bit of it worth learning.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Iran Caught Red-Handed

ABC has a big scoop:U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor. First impressions from Captain's Quarters: Iran Gives US A Casus Belli, If We Want It:If this turns out to be correct, Bush has to act against Teheran regardless of the EU's position. The US cannot ignore provocations from a nation that directly results in our soldiers being attacked and killed. Message to the mullahs: Don't Get Up--We'll Let Ourselves in!

The Tarheel Grand Prix

Good Lord All Mighty, this country has become so Islamophobic that an Islamist "student" from Iran can't even rent an SUV, plow into a gathering of infidels, express his gratitude at being afforded the opportunity to murder polytheists according to "Allah's will," and "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world" by striking at the heart of the American Military-College-Basketball complex without reactionaries claiming it's "terrorism" of some sort.

Hell Freezes Over

I take my truth where I find it. In this case, it comes from the "Workers' Liberty" newsletter. Go figure.The liberal Establishment, including the liberal newspapers, have responded to the still-burning political explosion ignited by the Danish cartoons showing Muhammad in a downright disgraceful way. They have turned tail on the traditions of freedom of religion and freedom to have no religion, of free speech and a free press, which in less demanding times they claim as their own and are ever ready to denounce Marxists for allegedly not accepting or defending.

Very little of the political explosion triggered by the Danish cartoons seems to have been spontaneous, raw religious outrage. It has been fomented, organised, directed by organised political movements and leaders of political Islam, including the Saudi government, and, in Syria and Lebanon, by the quasi-secularised Syrian Ba’thist government.From Karachi to London, to Baghdad, to Ramallah, the cartoons have been deliberately seized upon and used to organise a gigantic world-wide roll-call of the forces of Islamic reaction. The response has been impressive. And, as it was meant to be, intimidating. It has certainly intimidated the liberals.

The cartoons have been the focus for every grievance, resentment, imaginary insult or real injury which any part of the Muslim world feels against the non-Islamic world - against the modern world of globalised capitalism in general, and against American imperialism in particular.

Despite the presence of many grievances in the general mobilisation, the focus on the cartoons has made it a single movement with one upfront demand - that the non-Muslim world should obey the prohibition of (the majority of) Muslims against portraying (or against insulting) Muhammad.

That people everywhere should obey a rule of a religion they all reject, and some may abhor. That those who refuse to obey the Islamic edit should be punished and penalised by non-Islamic governments.

Western governments who do not want to have their embassies burned down, or their trade with Islamic countries boycotted and ruined, or the lives of their nationals in Muslim countries placed in jeopardy, had better make themselves enforcers for the rules of a religion which their citizens do not accept. That is the demand.

They must curb free speech and free expression. Curb the freedom to criticism and mock and outspokenly denounce religion - the freedom from which over centuries most of our freedoms have been spun and consolidated.

And how have the bourgeois-democratic governments and liberal newspapers and TV systems responded? In the face of an outcry which - whatever energies other than religious feelings have fuelled it - has been a vast outpouring of religious zealotry and bigotry, they have apologised!

They have scurried and run.

Communist and fascist extremism compete for the same territory in the human psyche, and are natural arch-enemies. That's a Good Thing.

Strangely, the article doesn't make any connection to those decidedly non-Marxist folks such as yours truly who agree with them, at least until they start talking about anything else; perhaps they just don't want to be seen in our clubhouse.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Thinking About Iran

Religion Of Peace Strikes Again

The UNC student newspaper The Daily Tarheel published a cartoon in answer to the uproar over the Danish caper. The 'toon depicted both Muslims and the Danes as culprits in the affair, satisfying someone's sense of moral relativism, I guess. But even editorial ambiguity is a sin to the local Muslim Student Association, who made the usual bullshit claims: bigotry, hatred, persecution, you know the drill.

The Mullahs Show Their Colors

I suppose this will come as a big surprise to the useful idiots who like to pretend the madmen running Iran have been negotiating in good faith with the EU3. Allah at Alarming News points out that Charles Johnson has been chronicling Iran's Manhatten Project for three years, during which the EU3 and the IAEA have swallowed Iranian lies hook, line and sinker.

And now the appeasers are the subject of open Iranian derision for their gross naiveté.

It's looking more and more like 1938 all over again. How many will die in the name of wishful thinking this time around?

Bush In India

Power Line's John Hindraker scanned Indian media for their take on President Bush's visit. The result, President Bush, as the Indians Saw Him shows that it's possible to report on Bush without attacking him.

The articles are in such contrast to the anti-Bush bigotry in the western press that Hindraker observes, "It's interesting how odd it seems to read accounts of President Bush that are written by people who don't hate him."

While Air America Radio's loss of two affiliates is generating news this week, the company itself probably hasn't been able to give either city a second thought.Why? In a development sure to rip the heart right out of the liberal radio network's already ailing body, it appears extremely likely their leased New York City flagship station WLIB-AM will soon abandon Air America programming.Even worse, litigation looks probable over the station's lease.While the network's last day on WLIB isn't known for certain, an internal source providing backing documentation points to the end of March. At this time, Air America parent Piquant LLC has no firm back-up plan for where in the nation's largest radio market its programming will now air.Some inside the firm are already referring to WLIB in the past tense.You go, Stuart Smalley.

More Nerve Than Dick Tracy

President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador's position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the former president recalled yesterday in a talk in which he also criticized President Bush's Christian bona fides and misstated past American policies on Israel.That's right. First, Jimmah promised Cuba, Egypt, and Pakistan that "the United States was not going to dominate all the other nations of the world in the Human Rights Council." Don't know where he got it that he is in a position to make promises for 260 million people who rejected him as their leader going back oh a golden anniversary now, but by golly there he is.

However, on the next day, Mr. Carter said, [U.S. Ambassador to The U.N.) Mr. Bolton publicly "demanded" that the five permanent members of the Security Council will have permanent seats on the new council as well, "which subverted exactly what I have promised them," Mr. Carter said.

Except Mr. Carter has no right to promise anyone anything beyond that he and his friends will build you a house.

At some point Carter also breathlessly atoned, "We worship the prince of peace, not of pre-emptive war." I guess "highschool-yearbook" is Jimmah's thang right now.

I hope he gets it after this that he's, well, irrelevant except as a model leftwing fuckup.